


The Five Stages of Housebreaking Bones

by thalialunacy



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thalialunacy/pseuds/thalialunacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Jim brings a dog back onto the ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Five Stages of Housebreaking Bones

**DENIAL**

"Bones."

"Yeah?"

"Bones!"

"Yes?"

"Booooones!"

"What!"

"I… Well…"

"Spit it out, you moron."

"Imayhavedonesomethingagainstregs," Jim says on a whoosh.

McCoy touches the PADD in front of him to flip the page. "And?"

Jim eyes him like he's a sleeping tiger. "That's it?"

"What's it?"

"You're not going to yell at me?"

"No."

"No?"

"No. I'm going to pretend this conversation didn't happen."

Jim makes a skeptical face. "Why?"

McCoy lowers the PADD slightly and raises his eyes to the ceiling. "Oh, I dunno, maybe because my shift is over, and if it was something dangerous I'd know about it already because your ass would be in sick bay. So unless this ends with a roll in the hay, I am really too tired to give a damn."

Jim snickers. "Roll in the hay. Geez, Wally." He lands a kiss on McCoy's distracted lips, then stands and saunters to the door. "Fine, then. But don't say I didn't warn you."

McCoy raises an eyebrow but doesn't look up as the door snicks open. "I'm sorry, did you hear something? I think I heard a bug."

"Oh, very mature," Jim calls through just before the door slides shut between them.

 

 **ANGER**

"You did _what_?" McCoy's voice positively thunders around the captain's quarters.

Jim tries to placate him from his position in front of the door to his sleeping room. "It's just a dog, I mean, it's not like it's a—"

"You brought a _dog_ aboard a _star_ ship?"

Jim winces. "Keep your voice down!"

"Oh as if this room isn't soundproof, what with all our—" McCoy waves an arm in a vague swirl. "Tomfoolery."

Jim grins. "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

"Shut up and get back to the point. Which is that you broke about fifty rules—"

"Two, actually."

"—and the very laws of common _sense_ —"

"Oh come on now, as if you could've just left her." Jim sweeps open the door and bends down just in time to bodily catch something large and brown.

McCoy doesn't move. "You've _got_ to be kidding me."

Jim grins up at him. He fwumps down onto his bum and scratches the dog's huge head. "Isn't she beautiful?"

McCoy pinches the bridge of his nose. "Of course. Of course of all the strays you had to bring home, you brought home a god damn _Great Dane_."

"Well it's not like I had a lot of choice, there—"

"Have you at all considered the logistics of this?"

"Of course I have!" Jim answers, indefatigably cheerful. "I've got it all worked out."

"Oh really?"

"Yes really. I've asked Ensign—" The door chimes merrily. "Ah, see? Enter!"

"How do you know it's—"

"Ensign Collins reporting for duty, Sir!"

The kid's barely twenty, spotted and gangly and, McCoy is fairly certain from the intake examination (during which the ensign had displayed a gigantic propensity for video games and a rather severe stutter when asked about anything else), a blushing virgin.

McCoy can hardly keep from rolling his eyes as Kirk beckons the kid forward and starts yammering on about care and feeding. Once everything's set, Kirk waves him out and turns excitedly to McCoy. "You wanna meet her?"

McCoy eyes the beast, then extends a hand, palm up. "Does she have a name yet?"

Kirk grins as the dog noses at McCoy before snuffling up into his hand for petting. "Yes."

McCoy rubs behind the gigantic ears. "And? What, Daisy? Sunshine?"

"Scarlett."

McCoy closes his eyes. The dog licks at him. "I'm going to kill you."

 

 **BARGAINING**

"I could tell on you."

"But you won't."

"I'll… let you do that thing with the mangos you've been wanting to try."

Jim's face brightens, but then he reconsiders. "Very sticky. And we should wait until we can get real mangos."

"What if she hurts Chekov?"

Jim looks at him, horrified. "She'd never—"

"Not on purpose, not on purpose. I'm just saying, she's so huge, and he's like a twig, what if she straight knocks him over?"

Jim waves a hand. "Then you could fix him."

McCoy throws his hands up in the air. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, Jim…"

"What? Come to what?"

The door chimes.

"Computer," Jim calls out while looking narrowly at McCoy, "who is it?"

"It's Commander Spock, sir."

"Oh really." McCoy doesn't break gaze. Instead he cocks an eyebrow and basically dares Jim to argue. He doesn't. "Enter!"

"You summoned me, Doctor?" He comes to a halt just as the door slides shut behind him.

The dog trots up to Spock like they're at a picnic. Then stares at him.

Spock stares back.

This goes on… and on…

Until finally, McCoy swears he sees her eyebrow go up.

He shakes himself. "Commander, please tell Jim he's a lunatic for keeping this beast on board the _Enterprise._ "

"I hardly think indulging in a human ritual as common as keeping a domesticated canine indicates mental instability, Doctor, and if it did, I should think you would be the most qualified to make such an assessment—"

"It's a figure of speech, you—"

But Spock is on a roll. "Additionally, your assessment of the Captain reflects disapproval on Admiral Archer as well since he spent a great deal of his career in possession of a canid while on board his ship."

Jim hoots. "That's _right_! How could I forget that? That bastard had this beagle that he—"

McCoy, sensing he's been mutinied, tunes them out and sinks down into his chair in defeat. The dog—he refuses to call her by her ridiculous name—noses into his hand. He rubs her big soft muzzle and contemplates how his life has gone terribly, horribly astray.

He needs a drink. Or seven.

 

 **DEPRESSION**

McCoy's discontented grunt echoes in the dark room.

"What?" Kirk mumbles into his shoulder.

"Well, Jim, your dog is trying to push me off the bed."

"She has a name, you know. And what with the legally binding contract you signed last year, as you may remember, she's your dog too."

McCoy growls. The dog whimpers, although she's so big it sounds like an answering growl. "Fine. _Miss Scarlett_ is doing her full best to push my grumpy ass off the bed."

"Maybe she just wants to cuddle."

"Yeah, with you." McCoy summarily sits up, yanks one of the pillows off the bed, and stalks to the couch.

"Aw, Bones, don't be like that!"

"I'll be however I wanna be," McCoy grumbles once he's planted himself face-first on the unbelievably uncomfortable piece of furniture.

As expected, about a minute later he feels something pushing against his side. "Jim, go away."

Jim's voice floats up from the bed, barely awake. "What?"

McCoy cracks an eye open. And there's Miss Scarlett, looking for all the world like she actually gives a damn about McCoy's discomfort.

He's probably just projecting, though. "Go away, you mangy mutt," he mutters, closing his eye again. And for a moment, he is left alone, and he begins to breathe out—

Until suddenly he has what feels like a million pounds of supremely bony dog directly on top of his legs.

He hears a chuckle from the other side of the room. "Told you."

"Shut up."

 

 **ACCEPTANCE**

Jim's chair console beeps. "McCoy to Kirk."

"Kirk here. What's up, Bones?"

"Captain, at your earliest convenience, you're needed in your quarters."

Jim doesn't have to be psychic to know that his bridge crew is smirking at him. He knows because he's smirking as well. "Oh really?"

"Just get your ass down here pronto, Jim. McCoy out."

When he walks into his quarters a little while later, Jim's expecting, at the very least, a naked Bones wrapped in a bow. Or for something to be on fire. Either way, he is not prepared to see McCoy sitting at the foot of the bed, next to a veritable fort of blankets, in the center of which is settled a weary and slightly discomfited-looking Scartlett.

He works it out before McCoy can even open his mouth. "Oh, shit! When's she due?"

A smile tugs at McCoy's lips as he runs his hand gently along her side. "A couple weeks."

Jim plops down in front of them with a grin. "You're going to be a grandpa! You've been an old man for years, so it's only fitt—"

McCoy covers Kirk's mouth with his free hand. "Please, Jim, I just got her to calm down after the examination."

Kirk kisses his palm, and McCoy removes his hand. Then Kirk kisses his lips, and McCoy finds himself thoroughly snogged for a good minute or so. Kirk even makes a bid for more, but McCoy pulls back, tsking. "We are not having sex directly in front of the dog."

"Why not?" Kirk whispers, his eyes twinkling deviously. "She clearly knows what it's about. We could even do it d—"

The hand clamps over Jim's mouth again. "Oh for the love of all things good and holy do _not_ finish that sentence."

Thirteen days later, McCoy's in the middle of doing possibly the most boring paperwork in the history of paperwork when he hears Jim's frantic voice over the comm. "She's—it's—Oh my god Bones please get here _now_."

And an hour after that, the first puppy slides messily out. McCoy feels Jim clutching his shoulder and turns to find the captain surprisingly pale-faced. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me. You can stand bleeding from every one of your own limbs but this is too much for you?"

Jim gesticulates wildly. "My limbs don't matter! She's—she's mine! She's ours! She's—ohmygod here comes another one!"

Seven, there end up being seven, and McCoy talks Jim through all of their births. Then he tries to shoo Jim out of the room. "Why?" Jim asks, still pale but determined. "I don't under—" The afterbirth oozes out. "Oh. Right. I'll just—"

McCoy rolls his eyes as Jim covers his face and starts counting to twenty. Then he softens. A little. "Hey." He nudges at Kirk with his elbow. "Make yourself useful and go fill that tub with hot water, okay?"

Kirk grits his jaw, nods, and does as directed, and soon they have seven lumps of puppy sucking wearily at the teat.

"Good god, Bones, would you look at them," Jim says quietly, his voice full of awe.

McCoy smiles a little and puts an arm around Jim, planting a soft kiss somewhere by his ear. "Congratulations, Grandpa," he murmurs.

Jim opens his mouth to protest, but McCoy gives him the stink eye. "Don't you dare," he hisses on a whisper, "start cussin at me right now. These little guys are new and scared and their momma is downright exhausted."

Jim blinks at him. Then grins. "You just tried to protect them from me."

"I—" McCoy puffs up a little in the chest. "So what if I did?"

"She's finally broken you." And he kisses McCoy full on the mouth. "That bitch."

 _  
**FIN**   
_

**Author's Note:**

> camesawconquerd arted some things in this universes, if you're interested: [Ensign Collins](http://pics.livejournal.com/thalialunacy/pic/002xf1t9) & [Bones](http://pics.livejournal.com/thalialunacy/pic/002xgd46).
> 
>  **Sources** : Prompted by and written for camesawconquerd, who also provided a few choice lines. Some other good bits were donated by soloproject. Thanks to Wikipedia, [Memory Alpha](http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Porthos), _Sport Night_ episode 1x3, and [this site](http://www.fotodanes.com/k9pregnancy.htm). and just because: [omg cute puppin](http://www.dogguide.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/3012531414_e0d2e96e16.jpg).


End file.
